June 1973 - Recipe Review - Halibut Mardi Gras

I wanted to do another recipe review since the last one was so good.  The June issue had a lot of recipes to choose from.  We’re trying to eat a little healthier so I had to rule out some recipes.

With the Cooks section
This section is recipes that readers have sent in and it’s all cookies for June.  There were Ginger Cookies, Frosty Fruit Balls, White Sugar Cookies, Butterscotch Jumbles, Date or Raisin Jumbles, Poppy Seed Cookies and Confetti Squares.    So much sugar!  Let’s move on to the magazine recipe section.

Enter the Entrée

• Beef-Potato Roulades – this looked too complicated.  I didn’t want to roll beef around grated potato.
• Slim Jim Baked Chicken – this was our third choice.  Contrary to the name it contains no Slim Jims.  It’s chicken, garlic salt, paprika, oregano, lemon peel and juice and water.
• Stuffed Baked Trout with Parmesan trout sauce – also too complicated.  I don’t want to stuff trout.
• Rotisseried Rump Roast – this was more a “how-to” than a recipe.  It required a rolled rump roast and a rotisserie.  We had neither.
• Oriental Mixed Vegetable Steak – this was our second choice.  It’s basically bell pepper, celery, onions, bean sprouts and water chestnuts that are stir fried with some sliced steak and a ginger-soy sauce.
• Tuna Mousse – aside from being complicated, the ingredients didn’t sound that great; unflavored gelatin, shredded processed American cheese, tuna, sweet pickle relish, corn Chex and whipping cream were the main ingredients.
• French Fried Fish – we didn’t want to deep fry anything.
• Stuffed Beef Rolls – rolling and stuffing again.
• Stuffed Pork Chops Swedish Style – stuffing again.
• And the recipe I made; Halibut Mardi Gras

I have no idea what makes this Mardi Gras but it seemed pretty simple.   I ordered Cod from Costco because it was half the price of Halibut and I didn’t want to use an expensive ingredient in this recipe.
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Joel found a lovely tomato at the co-op though.  I didn't have any paprika so I used Aleppo Pepper.

​This was pretty simple to put together and I used my classic covered baking dish:

Even with a lemon and the Aleppo it was pretty bland.  We didn’t garnish with the sour cream but maybe we should have.   It was also dry and chewy.   I think it was probably over cooked.  35 minutes at 400 degrees seems like a long time at a fairly high temp.  As I was trying to troubleshoot the recipe for "next time" Joel suggested that it wasn't really worth trying again.  He's right.  We have plenty of ways to cook fish that are delicious.

Next week – I’m hoping to have the dress with butterfly sleeves done but I’m not even half done with it so it might be another week before I can share that with you.